Olim Meminisse Juvabit
by chaletian
Summary: Stuck in the mire of the Great War, Thomas tries not to remember what he left behind.


**Olim Meminisse Juvabit**

**by Liss Webster**

Even covered in blood, Thomas' hands don't shake. He takes the saw from Dr Foxton, and puts it down on the tray. His hands don't shake. He's been well trained.

_"No need to be nervous, Thomas," Mr Carson says._

_"I'm not nervous, Mr Carson!" replies Thomas, but he knows Mr Carson can see his hands shake on the polished and perfect silver tray with all the cutlery laid out on it. _

_"Dining room'll be empty," Mr Carson carries on, just as if Thomas hadn't said anything. "No-one there but you and me. You'll get that table laid beautifully and we'll have you a footman in no time."_

No more silver trays, not now, not here. It's tin trays for him; scalpels and clamps and needles instead of shining silver cutlery, but he places each tool on the blood-spattered front as precisely as if it were dinner for a duke. A man should take pride in his work (Mr Carson always said).

This is not how Thomas had planned to spend the war. This isn't how Thomas had planned the war at all. Over by Christmas, everyone had said; nothing much. And Thomas, he'd been clever, hadn't he? Signed up with that medical lot first thing (either that or face dismissal, thanks to that bastard Bates). Thomas' plan had been simple, spending his time in some fancy hospital in England, chumming up with young nobs with sword wounds. Practically romantic, that was.

_Daisy giggles and goes pink and shy, and Thomas wants to slap her, hit her, hurt her, for thinking love is all easy and roses, but he settles for laughing at her instead, the noise hard and cold in the nutmeg and cinnamon of the Christmas kitchen, and he sees Bates and Anna glaring at him as Daisy's smile droops._

No romance, here. It's all blood and vomit and screaming.

"All we can do for him," announces Foxton eventually, and the last of his tools clatter onto the bloody tray. Thomas takes it over to the cracked ceramic sink, and begins to wash them. Surgery's over for now. "Good job," says Foxton, tossing the praise over his shoulder as he heads for the door, and Thomas scowls as the carbolic soap stings his fingers.

"Course I did a good job," he says under his breath. "Always do I good job, don't I?"

_"You've done an excellent job, Thomas," says Mr Carson, and Thomas nods, because he knows it's true, "but it seems His Lordship has someone else in mind for the job. Now, that's no reflection on you. He was very clear on that. But – well, that's how it is."_

It's cold when he goes outside. He's got cigarettes, stolen off a private with half his head burnt away (chlorine gas is nasty). One of the Lancashire regiments. Thomas supposes people would judge him for it, but that Lancashire lad isn't going to be smoking any time soon. Why waste? It's dark and bleak outside the field hospital. The muddy ground is frosted over. Different as anything you like from Thomas' life before, but for some reason he can't shake Downton from his head.

It's the letter. He stubs out the cigarette with angry vehemence, and lights another with frozen fingers. Of course it's the bloody letter. Why is old Carson writing to him now, eh? Two years since he left that place. Eighteen months since he arrived in Abbeville. What the bloody hell does Carson suddenly have to say to him? Got his posting off O'Brien, sure as anything.

He leans against the wall, spare hand tucked into the other armpit to keep warm as he puffs on the cigarette. The letter – it couldn't be anything bad, else O'Brien would never have said where he was. She'd always stuck up for him, ever since he was a kid.

_They sit in companionable silence, him with a pile of boots in front of him, covered in polish and waiting for a brushing, her with a pair of m'lady's dancing slippers, her needle whipping in and out, mending a tear on the little silk flowers. She's pretty, Miss O'Brien, Thomas thinks, as she looks over at him with a quick smile, and he says, almost without thinking, "I wish you were my mum."_

_She looks up, needle pausing, and he blushes and grabs a boot, applying himself vigorously to brushing, but all she says is, "Got a perfectly good mother of your own, young Thomas; you don't need me."_

_It's not true, really. Thomas knows about his mother. No better than she should be, that's what everyone says, and she sent him off to work in the big house soon enough, didn't she? But Miss O'Brien smiles at him again, and tells him about London gents whose valets clean their boots with champagne, and he doesn't mind._

That letter! Thomas stamps out the second cigarette, and wishes, God, he wishes he could just punch something, but the only thing available is a brick wall and he doesn't fancy breaking his hand, thanks. He should open it. Just open it. It won't be anything, he tells himself. Nothing important. Some daft news about Downton that he won't give a tinker's for, and then he can burn it, and forget Downton sodding Abbey for good. It was history, old news, and it shouldn't give him this churning inside (what if someone's dead?). He just needs to read it. He just needs—

He hears the ambulance before he sees it, the coughing engine advertising its presence long before the mist parts. Thomas straightens up and pulls open the door to the hospital, shouting for the porter. It's two men, RFC uniforms scorched. Reconnaissance, Thomas reckons, though how they could see anything in this was a mystery. Picking up spies maybe. Foxton reappears. Leaving secret messages, he's heard that happens a lot. One of them's in a bad way – definitely an amputation, if he's lucky.

The other chap's still standing (more or less), clinging to the door frame as Foxton and the others bustle round the goner. Thomas spares him a glance, and freezes for a second, because he recognises him. It's only the Duke of bloody Crowborough. He almost laughs, because this is some sort of cosmic joke, like the universe refuses to let him forget. He can't forget, and with Crowborough right there (damn his cocky look and his shiny hair and his hungry, hungry mouth, not that he's showing any of those now), Thomas can't help but be drawn back to that last Christmas. Not his last Christmas at Downton (miserable, that had been), but Christmas 1911, when everything had been simpler and more straightforward, when Mr Carson had still been showing him the way, when William looked up to him and he and Anna could share a laugh, when Mrs Hughes had actually patted his cheek and given him a scarf she'd knitted. And Crowborough had been visiting, Crowborough with his cocky look and his shiny hair and his hungry, hungry mouth, which had been, just for a while, for Thomas and Thomas alone.

The pilot's dead. The smell of burnt flesh hangs in the air like a shroud.

Foxton shakes his head and swears, and Thomas places surgical instruments neatly on the tray. There's blood on his hands, all over his hands, but they don't shake. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Crowborough put his hand up to his eyes. He'd bollocksed that one up, as well, like he had everything else, and he _doesn't care_. Not worth it, any of them. Quick enough to turn their backs, weren't they? Even Carson, who'd known him since he was a kid. Not worth it.

He wonders what the letter says.

Tillotson leads Crowborough away into the gloomy depths of the hospital, and Thomas sees, for a flash, Lord Grantham leading the Duke into the Library, arm clapped over his shoulder, laughing. He closes his eyes.

The clock strikes midnight, and he opens them again. Christmas. No football matches this year. It's not that kind of war any more. He can feel the letter in his pocket, exactly the same as those envelopes that Carson put the wages in, every week, clockwork, little extra at Christmas. Thomas heads for the door, almost running, as if he could run away from this.

Outside it's even colder than before, and his fingers feel numb as he fumbles for a cigarette. He never should have pinned his hopes on getting that job as His Lordship's valet, that's what. He'd deserved it, though. Everyone knew it. Carson'd said so. Bloody Bates.

His breath comes out in sharp puffs; the smoke in hazier clouds. That Christmas, 1911 it had been, he and O'Neill had stood out in the kitchen yard smoking and stamping their feet, having a bit of a gossip. The kitchen door had been ajar, and the light had streamed out. Could hear them all – Mrs Patmore laughing her head off at something, and Gwen and William squabbling over the mistletoe. That rumble of Mr Carson's, when you couldn't quite hear what he was saying. You could smell the Christmas pudding, and somewhere in the house someone was playing carols on the piano. Lady Edith. It was always Lady Edith.

One of the soldiers inside is crying out in pain. Thomas' hand steals into his pocket and pulls out the letter. Black ink, upright letters. Sickly light flickers out from the hospital, and he tears open the envelope. Doesn't matter what it says. Downton's not his home any more. _He doesn't care._

He reads it. More forgiving than he deserves (_he doesn't care_). He reads the letter and his hands shake, and he remembers that last Christmas before he ruined it all.


End file.
